An Anniversary
by upsidedownbutterfly
Summary: "Do you ever regret it? Marrying me?" Han and Leia on one of their anniversaries. Set post-Fate of the Jedi, but spoilers only through Legacy of the Force.


Title: An Anniversary  
Author: upsidedownbutterfly  
Summary: "Do you ever regret it? Marrying me?" Han and Leia on one of their anniversaries. Set post-_Fate of the Jedi_, but spoilers only through _Legacy of the Force_.  
Rating: G  
Disclaimer: They're not mine, people.

* * *

He found her in the living area of their new quarters standing before the large window that dominated the room's northern wall, looking out over the darkened landscape with unfocused eyes. She didn't speak or move or otherwise acknowledge his presence, though Han knew she must have felt him. She'd probably known it the second he'd awoken.

For a moment, Han simply studied her profile. In the light of the three moons, he could just make out the tight set of her mouth, the subtle droop to her shoulders, and the whiteness of her knuckles as they gripped the shawl wrapped across her back. Something was bothering her, had been all day. She'd seemed to Han somehow distant, withdrawn since she'd awoken that morning. He'd tried not to examine why too closely – it's usually not an encouraging sign for your wife to spend your anniversary in a melancholic haze – but he hadn't been wholly surprised when he awoke a few minutes earlier to find her side of the bed vacant.

Now their anniversary was two hours over. It was probably time to face the blasterfire and find out what was wrong.

"Leia?" His voice sounded deafeningly loud in the stillness of the early morning hours.

She didn't reply or even turn her head. Her only response was to pull the shawl even tighter around her shoulders as if to ward him off along with the chill that hung in the air of the darkened room.

Han just waited, joining her in her silence. After all these years, he knew Leia well enough to know that she would talk when she was ready and any and all attempts to force her into doing so before that would be nothing more than an exercise in frustration.

It felt like hours that they stood there in the dark, but realistically Han knew it probably wasn't even minutes. Then finally, just when he was beginning to lose confidence in her ever responding, she spoke: "Do you ever regret it?"

"Regret what?"

Her eyes never left the night sky. "Marrying me."

Han blanched. "Regret marrying _you_?" he repeated incredulously. It was a ridiculous notion, inconceivable even. In fact, Han had spent the first decade of their marriage convinced that the _opposite_ was true – that one day, Leia would recover from whatever fit of temporary madness she'd clearly been suffering from on the day of their wedding and regret marrying _him_.

Leia didn't respond, but something in the way her mouth tightened still further told Han that he hadn't misheard.

He shook his head. "I was a smuggler with a bounty on my head and I married a princess-slash-galactic hero, and you're wondering if _I _ever regretted _that_?" He meant his response to be light, but the shadows dancing on Leia's face sucked out any levity he tried to infuse and the words hung hollow between them in the dark.

"You can't tell me this is the life you expected."

_Are you crazy? _Han wanted to say, because she wasn't making any sense. Han could imagine quite a bit, but, no, he couldn't imagine any universe in which he ever, even for a single moment, regretted marrying Leia. Throwing up his hands – literally – he decided to cut to the chase. "Okay, princess, what's eating you?"

Her shrug was almost imperceptible. "Sometimes I feel like I dragged you into this."

Which was still not particularly illuminating for Han. "Dragged me into what?"

Leia sighed. "This life," she said, gesturing vaguely about the room with one hand. "You could have married some nice girl, retired to a quiet little corner of the galaxy, but you married me and got dragged into every war, trade conflict, and diplomatic dispute from here to the Unknown Regions."

"_That's_ what you're worried about?" He reached out and let his hand settle on her shoulder. "Leia, I'll admit you've had me up to my neck in galactic politics whether I liked it or not, but let's be honest here." He squeezed her shoulder. "The quiet life would have gotten boring anyway."

Her chin dropped almost to her chest, and her next words were a whisper: "Your sons would have lived."

Han felt as though he'd been punched in the gut at the mention of their boys, and then again as the full weight of Leia's words sunk in. "Hey," he said, reaching for her other shoulder, "hey, hey, what happened to Anakin and Jacen was hardly your fault."

She pulled away from him, stalking a few steps across the room before turning back around to face him. For the first time that night she met his eyes and Han could see in hers the moonlit glimmer of unshed tears. "Wasn't it though?" she said. Her voice was still quiet, but the words burned with a ferocity that hadn't been there before. "What happened to Anakin, what happened to Jacen… It happened because they were _my_ children."

Han shook his head vigorously. "No. No, Anakin died because he was a Jedi, doing what Jedi do." It was something that had taken Han himself a long time to accept in the aftermath of Myrkr. Yet even in his darkest, most spiteful moments, when he'd blamed everyone and everything for taking his youngest son from him, the one person he'd _never_ blamed was Leia.

"_Exactly_," she spat out. "Anakin died because he was a Jedi, and he was a Jedi _because he was my son_. Because he was heir to the Skywalker legacy that _I _passed on to him. And Jacen…" Her laugh was sharp and bitter. "I suppose that was the great Skywalker legacy at work as well."

Frost crept through Han's veins as surely as if someone had submerged him in an ice bath on Hoth. "Leia…" he started, but he didn't know what else to say. For all they'd rehashed the fate of Anakin Skywalker early in their marriage, she rarely brought up her father anymore, even after Jacen's fall. Han had stupidly let himself think that meant she'd finally moved past it. Now watching his wife standing in their quarters fists quivering at her sides and eyes blazing with anger behind the tears as she blamed her bloodline for the deaths of their sons, Han recognized how very wrong he'd been.

For a wild moment, he wished Luke was there. Her brother had always been better than him at dealing with Leia's intense and conflicted emotions about their father. Of course Luke was only a few rooms away which meant, Han realized, if Leia wanted him there, he would be already.

"Leia," he tried again, but once more got nowhere. He wanted to reach out for her again, but feared it would only drive her into further retreat. He stood frozen and mute, searching for the right words or the right actions and coming up with nothing that wasn't certain to make things worse.

Then suddenly, as he stood there paralyzed to inaction, she seemed to deflate before him, fists unclenching and shoulders sagging. The moment of anger passed as quickly as it had set in, leaving only the melancholy Han had awoken to in its wake. "I'm sorry, Han, it's just—" She reached up and brushed a single tear away from her eye. "I've brought you so much pain."

Han crossed to her then and took her shoulders. "No," he said as firmly as he could manage. "No, that's _not_ true."

She sniffled and looked down. "We both know it is."

"Then it was worth it." He didn't choose the words – they'd left his mouth before he'd even had time to think about them – but they were no less true. Totally and absolutely true, he realized as he took a moment to reflect. After all, on some level she was right: he and Leia _had_ gone through hell together more than once only to come out the other side, turn around, and head right back into the fray, but Han had never once, not even for an instant, doubted that trekking through hell at Leia's side was _exactly _where he wanted to be.

She looked up at him, dark eyes widening in surprise. "How can you say that, Han? If you'd married someone else you could have raised a whole mess of children and grandchildren, and every one of them could have outlived you. Instead you married a Skywalker and buried both your sons."

"It was worth it," he repeated emphatically, trying to imbue the words with the clear, bright _certainty_ he felt in his heart. "I won't say it didn't hurt," he continued hastily, as Leia opened her mouth to protest still further. "Losing Anakin... before he died, I could never have imagined anything could hurt that much. Jacen too, even if we lost him a long time before he died. And, sure, maybe you're right, maybe I could have married someone else and never had to experience any of that, but one, you can't know that, and two, Leia…" He let his hands slide from their place on her shoulders, running down her arms until he grasped her hands in his. "It was worth it. _You _were worth it. _All_ of it."

She looked away, but didn't let go of his hands. "You never meant to choose this," she said in a voice thick with emotion. "This was my burden to bear and I made it yours too. You never asked for any of this."

"Maybe not," Han agreed, "but even if you gave me the choice all over again – even knowing all that I know now – I would still choose you, Leia." She looked back to him then, and Han was no Jedi, but somehow he still knew she was reaching for him in the Force, searching his thoughts for any sliver of falsehood in his words. She wouldn't find any, Han knew, and so he opened his mind to her as best he knew how. He gathered up all the love he'd ever felt for her over the last forty-odd years and let it blaze in the forefront of his mind, and beside it he placed the simple, shining certainty he'd tried to convey with his words – the certainty that for all they had suffered, he wouldn't undo a single day of their life together.

She could feel it, Han knew, because as he watched, the furrows in her brow smoothed and the darkness behind her eyes began to clear ever so slightly. He gave her a crooked smiled. "Not that it ever really was a choice. It was never going to be anyone but you."

She smiled then, watery but real. "I wish for your sake it could have been."

"I don't," he replied, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her again his chest. He kissed her head and pressed his face into her hair. "My life with you – I wouldn't have missed it for anything."


End file.
